Friday, my love!

It seems like it has been entirely too long since the last weekend!  I'm exhausted and so ready for this week to be over!  It's about 10:45am and I have to make it until 4:30, it's going to be a long day. 

I have just 6 days left after today at my current job! (I'm seriously jumping up and down!)  I am so tired of it, it just isn't a good fit for me, which is probably a good thing since I went back to school for my masters to do something else. 

I will spend the entire month of June, Monday-Thursday attending class 3 hours away from home... Talk about a long drive! That's 24 hours of driving in the month of June, all by myself! Not to mention the weekends we have to travel elsewhere for weddings & such.  I'll be staying in the luxurious, spacious, beautiful hotel known as the dreaded dorm room!  Dun dun dun.... Yes, I said dorm room.  Hey, it's $20/night, you can't beat that!  It's really not that bad and it is my last summer of classes, Praise the Lord! 

July is a busy month, but it will be o so much fun!  My brother is getting married finally. I can hardly believe it!  My cousin is getting married, it's Hubby's 28th Birthday, showers to attend, my future SIL's b-day, my Mom's LASIK (she's getting it done here, so she'll be staying with us for a couple days until she can drive back home), the Bix, Ragbrai is coming through our town and we have a concert.  Fhew..... What a long month it will be, but I won't have to work, so it'll make it that much better!

Anyway, as you can tell, I'm looking forward to summer and only having 6 days left at this job! :-) This weekend we have a wedding to attend and some cleaning to do. 

Hope you have a fabulous Friday and an even better weekend! :-) 

p.s.  It's suppose to be 85-90 degrees here all next week!!!! Summer may arrive quicker than expected! yeah!

The Bix

So, as I said here my goal for The Bix was 1:10:00..... Well I am sorry to say that I failed on that one. I did however run "most" of the entire race, with the exception of two short walks up these two gigantic hills! I mean these babies were enormous! I was not prepared for the hills and those are what kicked my butt.

Warning: This next paragraph might be too much information for some of you, I'm warning you if you read on, I will talk about how I got sick during the race... Proceed with caution!

Before I tell you my real time, I must first tell you why I did not accomplish close to what my goal was.... I did great the first 1/2 of the race (at mile 3.5) I was at 36:06. If I would have kept the same pace throughout the second 1/2, I would have ended with a 1:12:12 which would have been A-OK with me! That would have been great.... However; because I was up at 5:00 am, I was not able to eat anything (I feel sick to my stomach when I wake up that early, weird huh? haha) so, around mile 4-5 I started feeling this "stuff" in my throat.... Well, I kept running and I kept grabbing cups of water as they were offered at about every mile marker.... (Bad Idea Kayla).... An empty stomach, running 7 miles, drowning yourself in water.... Not a good combination. You can see where this is going! So, here I am, I see the sign for the final mile!! I've almost made it I said to myself! I told myself I was not going to walk any of the last mile because I've almost finished and I can do this. Well, I see the sign: 1/8th mile to go! I can't believe I'm almost made it!! Then the "stuff" mentioned above started to continue upwards..... I thought to myself: "This is not happening to me, I'm almost finished! I can make it and finish at 1:12:00! I can do it".... FAIL! I had about 1/16th of a mile to go to the finish line and I had to make a B-line to the curb where I continued to throw up all of the water that was drank the previous 6 miles.... I spent a good 4-5 minutes getting sick, but I got back up and finished the race, that's the proud moment I had! haha I finished sprinting, because I felt so good after getting sick that I had all of this energy left!

So, I finished with an official time of 1:17:30 (or something along those seconds). Not too shabby and I feel that if I wouldn't have gotten sick, I really would have been close to 1:12:00 and I would have been proud of that. Especially since I was not prepared for this race and could not run for the last 3-4 weeks.

All in all it was a great race and I am "fairly" proud of finishing it. We've decided not to do the 1/2 marathon in October, because neither my hubby nor I have the desire to run 13.1 miles ever... 7 was good enough for the both of us. We are going to try and stay on track for the 1/2 marathon just to stay in shape and keep running, but we decided 3 hours post race that neither of us really wanted to do it... :-)

So, my goal for next year's Bix is to be under a 1:10:00 and I know I can do it this time! I will be prepared!

Thanks for all of the well wishes and good luck's! I know it helped, especially on that first 1/2 of the race! :-)

The Bix

Tomorrow is the big day! We're running in The Quad City Times Bix 7 race. I'm nervous and excited all at the same time. This is my first big race since trying to start up running again... It's a 7 mile race and it's one of the most prestigious races in the country. People finish this race in under 32 minutes or better! (Mostly Kenyon runners who sprint the entire thing and win a new car and $25,000 for winning) I however, have my own goals for this race. I will not be running a 32 minute 7 mile race, so I hate to disappoint all of you!

Goals for the Bix:

1. I want to finish and I want to finish running

2. I will not walk any of the race, I refuse to. I don't care if I have to "run" the speed of a turtle, I will run the entire thing. It has been my goal since the beginning.

3. I say I don't care about my time, but my goal for a time is to be under 1:10:00. That's 10:00 minute miles which is totally doable. But since my LASIK surgery, I haven't been able to run much. At one time, I could run a 7.25 minute mile, but those days are long gone. Since LASIK I've only been able to run 4 times, so that's not a good sign.

4. I want to have energy after the race. I don't want to die after the 7 miles, because my next goal will be to run a 1/2 marathon on October 18th.

5. My last goal will be to not keep up with anyone. I want to run my own pace and do as well as I can without trying to run next to someone.

I will check back on Sunday or Monday to let you know how it goes. As far as after the race, apparently there is a huge Bix party that night, so I'm pretty excited to join in on the festivities.

Those also running the race with me are: my hubby, parents, brother, future-sister-in-law, her parents, her sister & boyfriend and a few others. It should be a good time! :-)